Managing a group of people, whether small or large, can be a huge task. There are so many factors into making sure a project runs smoothly. Such factors include communication, completion of tasks, uploading files, reviewing each others’ work, reminders, tracking time, and so much more.

What is a group?

Before we get into the tools needed to do these tasks, what is the point of a group? From childhood, people have been working in groups, sometimes being forced, other times with joy. All-in-all, a group works together to make decisions and reach a common goal. A group is multiple people working together to provide help or support to each other by each completing different tasks with the purpose to reach the completion of one big task.

For example, say a doctor who is a member of a College gets a complaint from one of his or her patients. An Investigation committee, after receiving the complaint, will investigate the complaint and the people involved, seek the various consequences they can apply, review the misconduct, and using their judgement, decide what consequence matches the damages of the misconduct. Afterwards, the punishment of the doctor will also be communicated by the committee.

All the tasks can not be performed by just one person. They must be performed by multiple people jointly to reach one task, which is deciding if the doctor is guilty and what the reparations are.

A college or association has many types of groups for different purposes. Such groups include, but are not limited to:

• discipline/investigation/conduct committee (internal members, deals with complaints)
• registration committee (internal members, deals with applicants and registration)
• party planning committee (internal members, deals with the social aspect of a College)
• board of directors (made of internal members, some members, and some public, deals with decisions of the College)

Communication is a key aspect of being a successful group. Many do not realize the amount of tools a group needs in order to have smooth communication between one another. Especially in today’s world, where everybody’s minds are all over the place, technology greatly helps keep us organized. This is because there are so many types of communication methods available that benefit groups, settling for just a group chat or weekly meetings would not be helping your group to reach it’s most efficient potential.

Alinity’s Group Management Features

Tasks the group management feature in Alinity software can do are:

• file management
• shared documents
• tags
• email notifications
• messaging
• tasks and milestones

These tools not only help the group, but help the individuals in the group by providing tools to finish group work in less time because of faster communication.

Shared Documents

In the past, we’d have to create a document, email it, one person revises it, re-emails it to the next person, he or she revises it, and so on. This process is now a lot quicker due to the feature of shared files. With shared files, one person can upload a file and all or selected group members can access it, revise it, and even discuss it. Much easier for collaborative work!

File Management

File management is also much more efficient now with a section in the title that shows who uploaded the file, what time, and the uploader can even add notes for the next person reviewing the document to read. If you have a large amount of files, the file management feature helps with organization and searching for document names. Tags are able to be added to the file for easier searchability by group members.

Emails

There are email notifications that can be sent out to all or some group members. With email templates, communicating a reminder to a bunch of group members is easier than ever. Email templates also help simplify communication between members by keeping templates with re-usable topics, such as: meeting reminder, deadline reminder, extended deadline notification, absence notification, etc.

Tasks

Keeping track of incomplete and completed tasks is another area Alinity wants to make easier for the groups and committees of our clients. Tasks can be assigned to a member(s), and all documents and notes can be stored under it for easy finding.

Group Settings

There are also some group settings you can select using Alinity. These include how group members are selected and the privacy level you’d like to give your group.

Manual or Smart

Alinity allows staff to add people and either have them automatically assigned to a group because of a common feature with other group members, or have groups manually made with groups members manually selected and added. To better understand this feature, think of an iTunes playlist: you can have Smart playlist where it only adds songs that were released in 1995, or that are only the genre of alternative. You can also create a playlist manually by dragging and dropping only the songs you want that may or may not have anything in common with each other.

Privacy

Some groups have different levels of privacy. With Alinity they can be public, private (a password is needed to access the group online), or unlisted (meaning the group does not have a password and is not visible to the public and only people with a link into the group are able to use it). This is a great feature for groups with purpose that is more internal to the College than for the public.

Looking for the right Association Management Software?

Alinity’s group management feature is just one of our software’s many excellent capabilities. If you are looking for a new software to procure, you can use our Software Procurement Checklist below and compare all your favorite software with the same criteria!